There they are – tall, straight, lantern jawed, square shouldered, pin striped suits, perfect smiles – just waiting to wave and smile at you, our counterfeit men and women. Six years ago, they bore these same marks but they were smoother then and we could not determine their authenticity. But now we can; they’re as phony as three dollar bills. Look closely, the veneer of confidence is worn and cannot cover their angst; the surface lines are etched six years more deeply. These are actors struggling to make their exits, hoping you won’t notice that they’re totally inauthentic human beings, mere knock offs of those confident beings who took office on January 20, 2001. The lines they mouth were written for an audience that has long ago soured on this failed and rotten play.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and a half a hundred more – some already gone - simply mouth their lines in what was supposed to be a pleasant melodrama that has turned fatefully calamitous. Now they face tomatoes being tossed from the cheap seats and beg us to listen to their words.
The chorus of loyalists in congress and even in the audience can no longer quiet the cat calls. For six years, they had center stage and played to the crowd with happy words and phrases as the set fell apart about them. Now they’re alone with just their frayed costumes and worn makeup spouting repeated lines that used to inspire but which now are simply comic, tragically comic.
Give ‘em the hook, the Gong Show’s over.
Be gone you phony bums!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Thursday, February 08, 2007
How the Republicans got Snookered
It’s very sad to see how the party of Ike, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, the party of little government, got taken in by the neoconservatives. It’s really poignant because I don’t even blame the likes of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld or George W. Bush. (I do, but for the purpose of entertaining you, you’ll have to bear with me.)
A couple of postings ago, I talked about the influence of Machiavelli on our founders and how old Nick’s ideas were incorporated into our constitution. Students of republics, like Nick, saw that a major flaw in republican government is that factionalism, even during times of war, prevented such states from acting effectively in their own defense. I opined – and not being a real scholar - can only assume that I wasn’t the first - that our most brilliant founders such as Jefferson, Madison, Jay and Hamilton took the views of the author of The Prince into account when they drafted the role of our chief executive.
Having drifted from the liberalism of my youth to the moderate conservatism of my middle years, I was becoming an advocate of the `that government governs best which governs least’ crowd. Of course, I had to do the requisite mental gymnastics to get past the buying of loyalty by Reagan and Bush 41 as the federal budget became the ATM machine of powerful congressmen and the military industrial complex.
The story of how the neoconservatives - and others not relevant to this posting - bucked up the federal government in the years following the debacle of Vietnam and who found in The Gipper the perfect man to represent their philosophy of over the top hubris and world hegemony has been expressed many times by me and dozens of others.
The neocon philosophy melded perfectly with the deficiencies and weaknesses noted in our system of government by the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney when they saw power flow from the executive to the legislature when Dick Nixon drowned in the tsunami of 1974. So, as a philosophy of power prescribed by the founders for times of true crisis was seen by those who saw a classic imbalance in the powers of the presidency and the legislative branches, there came a confluence of actors and events that has come to lay low the Grand Old Party.
Until 9/11, Cheney, Rummy and like minded malcontents who failed to recognize that the wisdom of the founders in permitting the likes of Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Wilson to assume the great and very awesome and fearful powers of the Machiavellian inspired powerhouse of a chief during only in times of very real crises of near total war had to squirm in their seats as uppity congressional members whipped the men – and women – of Tricky Dick and later presidents like so many whipped dogs.
But – to call upon another member of the permanently disgraced who cannot be asked for assistance in governing – the neoconservatives saw a Rasputin like opening and they drove through it. While the first reaction of most Americans to 9/11 was righteous anger towards al Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan and toward other terrorist organizations, especially of radical Islamic origin, the neocons saw an opportunity to solve a whole host of power imbalances all at once, and they were as quick as a mad monk to whisper into the eager ears of those in power.
It was time to attack Iraq. Look what this could accomplish: teach more powerful members of the Axis of Evil that the U.S. and George W. Bush were not to be trifled with; demonstrate that we could topple any tyrant who threatened us or our allies; demonstrate far better than the rural and mountainous backwater of Afghanistan the fighting ability of U.S. forces; AND MOST IMPORTANT, TO CREATE A FALSE PREMISE FOR SEIZING THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS RESERVED FOR PRESIDENTS IN TIMES OF TRUE NATIONAL CRISES.
Thus, sadly, did the dimwits and innocents who called themselves Republicans get caught up in the martial airs of Hail to the Chief and sell out their true beliefs of limited government, avoidance of foreign entanglements, and tightwad spending, and become champions of a hubris that ranks with Rome, Napoleon, and nineteenth century England, with the notion of building bridges to nowhere and to centralizing power that would make our greatest war time leaders blanch.
Now our dear friends – innocent, decent, warm and fuzzy cloth coat Republicans worthy of Cal Coolidge and Ike – face being turned out of power for a generation because they were led down the – dare I say – the primrose path by these neoconservatives. Sad, but their wrath should not be directed solely upon the cynical neocons but rather on Dubya, Dick and Darth who should have known better.
Now the innocents circle like so many retarded musk ox before modern weapons to defend leaders they now see through. If they really believed in Republican and conservative principles, they’d be the ones calling for impeachment instead of avoiding a debate on Iraq.
Never mind, it will all turn out well. They’ll pass this fiasco off to the next crowd and the nation will survive, and they’ll have thirty years to lick their wounds and think about their folly. Well they can say to historians with honest hearts that they impeached a president, the wrong one, but they did it.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
A couple of postings ago, I talked about the influence of Machiavelli on our founders and how old Nick’s ideas were incorporated into our constitution. Students of republics, like Nick, saw that a major flaw in republican government is that factionalism, even during times of war, prevented such states from acting effectively in their own defense. I opined – and not being a real scholar - can only assume that I wasn’t the first - that our most brilliant founders such as Jefferson, Madison, Jay and Hamilton took the views of the author of The Prince into account when they drafted the role of our chief executive.
Having drifted from the liberalism of my youth to the moderate conservatism of my middle years, I was becoming an advocate of the `that government governs best which governs least’ crowd. Of course, I had to do the requisite mental gymnastics to get past the buying of loyalty by Reagan and Bush 41 as the federal budget became the ATM machine of powerful congressmen and the military industrial complex.
The story of how the neoconservatives - and others not relevant to this posting - bucked up the federal government in the years following the debacle of Vietnam and who found in The Gipper the perfect man to represent their philosophy of over the top hubris and world hegemony has been expressed many times by me and dozens of others.
The neocon philosophy melded perfectly with the deficiencies and weaknesses noted in our system of government by the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney when they saw power flow from the executive to the legislature when Dick Nixon drowned in the tsunami of 1974. So, as a philosophy of power prescribed by the founders for times of true crisis was seen by those who saw a classic imbalance in the powers of the presidency and the legislative branches, there came a confluence of actors and events that has come to lay low the Grand Old Party.
Until 9/11, Cheney, Rummy and like minded malcontents who failed to recognize that the wisdom of the founders in permitting the likes of Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Wilson to assume the great and very awesome and fearful powers of the Machiavellian inspired powerhouse of a chief during only in times of very real crises of near total war had to squirm in their seats as uppity congressional members whipped the men – and women – of Tricky Dick and later presidents like so many whipped dogs.
But – to call upon another member of the permanently disgraced who cannot be asked for assistance in governing – the neoconservatives saw a Rasputin like opening and they drove through it. While the first reaction of most Americans to 9/11 was righteous anger towards al Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan and toward other terrorist organizations, especially of radical Islamic origin, the neocons saw an opportunity to solve a whole host of power imbalances all at once, and they were as quick as a mad monk to whisper into the eager ears of those in power.
It was time to attack Iraq. Look what this could accomplish: teach more powerful members of the Axis of Evil that the U.S. and George W. Bush were not to be trifled with; demonstrate that we could topple any tyrant who threatened us or our allies; demonstrate far better than the rural and mountainous backwater of Afghanistan the fighting ability of U.S. forces; AND MOST IMPORTANT, TO CREATE A FALSE PREMISE FOR SEIZING THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS RESERVED FOR PRESIDENTS IN TIMES OF TRUE NATIONAL CRISES.
Thus, sadly, did the dimwits and innocents who called themselves Republicans get caught up in the martial airs of Hail to the Chief and sell out their true beliefs of limited government, avoidance of foreign entanglements, and tightwad spending, and become champions of a hubris that ranks with Rome, Napoleon, and nineteenth century England, with the notion of building bridges to nowhere and to centralizing power that would make our greatest war time leaders blanch.
Now our dear friends – innocent, decent, warm and fuzzy cloth coat Republicans worthy of Cal Coolidge and Ike – face being turned out of power for a generation because they were led down the – dare I say – the primrose path by these neoconservatives. Sad, but their wrath should not be directed solely upon the cynical neocons but rather on Dubya, Dick and Darth who should have known better.
Now the innocents circle like so many retarded musk ox before modern weapons to defend leaders they now see through. If they really believed in Republican and conservative principles, they’d be the ones calling for impeachment instead of avoiding a debate on Iraq.
Never mind, it will all turn out well. They’ll pass this fiasco off to the next crowd and the nation will survive, and they’ll have thirty years to lick their wounds and think about their folly. Well they can say to historians with honest hearts that they impeached a president, the wrong one, but they did it.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sunday, February 04, 2007
A Life
Life is good! Sometimes I fear that people reading this electronic rag think that I’m a pessimist; nothing could be further from the truth. While evil deeds are committed daily and there are truly malevolent people among us and only fools believe that man is perfectible, the species can better itself by degrees and there are members who give lie to the idea that we cannot do good.
Every day, the news is filled with man’s inhumanity to man and we hear the lament that that good news is never reported. That’s not quite true, as once in a while the story of life so extraordinary as to be almost divine comes to our attention and makes us happy to have lived in its time. Such a story was reported yesterday. A person who lives not far from me whom I have never met has done something so extraordinary that I cannot let it pass without comment.
A professor at George Mason University was awarded a one million dollar prize for his life’s work. That’s the least important part of the story. This great person devoted his being and overwhelming gifts to solving a problem that was the bane of the existence of millions of people living in poverty stricken parts of the world.
Abul Hussam, professor of Chemistry at George Mason, devoted his life and extraordinary talent to discovering a cost effective way to remove arsenic from the drinking water available to those living in many parts of the third world. This problem has killed literally millions of human beings before their times. And he did it, really.
I am pleased to be able to incorporate the AP article about this great person in this posting so that you can see that life can be very, very good. Professor Hussam proves that devoting ones life to solving a great problem is far more important than celebrity or in achieving material success. That he has been financially rewarded for this breathtaking breakthrough is simply icing on the cake.
I am pleased to include this article and I hope that you will read it and find it as inspiring as I did:
The Associated Press
Saturday, February 3, 2007; 8:32 AM
FAIRFAX, Va. -- A professor who developed an inexpensive, easy-to-make system for filtering arsenic from well water has won a $1 million engineering prize _ and he plans to use most of the money to distribute the filters to needy communities around the world.
The National Academy of Engineering announced Thursday that the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability would go to Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax. Hussam's invention is already in use today, preventing serious health problems in residents of the professor's native Bangladesh.
After moving to the United States in 1978, Hussam got his citizenship and received a doctorate in analytical chemistry. The Centreville, Va., resident has spent much of this career trying to devise a solution to the arsenic problem, which was accidentally caused by international aid agencies that had funded a campaign to dig wells in Eastern India and Bangladesh.
The wells brought fresh groundwater to farmers and others who previously had been drinking from bacteria- and virus-laced ponds and mudholes. But the aid agencies were unaware that the groundwater also had naturally high concentrations of poisonous arsenic. As infectious diseases declined, arsenic-related skin ailments and fatal cancers began to increase _ a problem that attracted much attention in the 1990s.
"I myself and all my brothers were drinking this water," said Hussam, who added that his family did not get sick, possibly because they had a good diet, which can help stem the effects of digesting arsenic.
Allan Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said arsenic poisoning affects millions of people worldwide and it has been difficult to convince people that what seems to be good water might be toxic.
"You can't see it or taste or smell it," Smith said. "The idea that crystal-clear drinking water would end up causing lung disease in 20 or 30 years is a little weird. It's unbelievable to people."
Hussam spent years testing hundreds of prototype filtration systems. His final innovation is a simple, maintenance-free system that uses sand, charcoal, bits of brick and shards of a type of cast iron. Each filter has 20 pounds of porous iron, which forms a chemical bond with arsenic.
The filter removes almost every trace of arsenic from well water.
About 200 filtration systems are being made each week in Kushtia, Bangladesh, for about $40 each, Hussam said. More than 30,000 have been distributed.
Hussam said he plans to use 70 percent of his prize so the filters can be distributed to needy communities. He said 25 percent will be used for more research, and 5 percent will be donated to GMU.
The 2007 sustainability prize is funded by the Grainger Foundation of Lake Forest, Ill., and the contest was set up to target the arsenic problem. Among the criteria for winning was an affordable, reliable and environmentally friendly solution to the arsenic problem that did not require electricity.
Hussam's award will be presented Feb. 20 at Union Station in Washington.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Every day, the news is filled with man’s inhumanity to man and we hear the lament that that good news is never reported. That’s not quite true, as once in a while the story of life so extraordinary as to be almost divine comes to our attention and makes us happy to have lived in its time. Such a story was reported yesterday. A person who lives not far from me whom I have never met has done something so extraordinary that I cannot let it pass without comment.
A professor at George Mason University was awarded a one million dollar prize for his life’s work. That’s the least important part of the story. This great person devoted his being and overwhelming gifts to solving a problem that was the bane of the existence of millions of people living in poverty stricken parts of the world.
Abul Hussam, professor of Chemistry at George Mason, devoted his life and extraordinary talent to discovering a cost effective way to remove arsenic from the drinking water available to those living in many parts of the third world. This problem has killed literally millions of human beings before their times. And he did it, really.
I am pleased to be able to incorporate the AP article about this great person in this posting so that you can see that life can be very, very good. Professor Hussam proves that devoting ones life to solving a great problem is far more important than celebrity or in achieving material success. That he has been financially rewarded for this breathtaking breakthrough is simply icing on the cake.
I am pleased to include this article and I hope that you will read it and find it as inspiring as I did:
The Associated Press
Saturday, February 3, 2007; 8:32 AM
FAIRFAX, Va. -- A professor who developed an inexpensive, easy-to-make system for filtering arsenic from well water has won a $1 million engineering prize _ and he plans to use most of the money to distribute the filters to needy communities around the world.
The National Academy of Engineering announced Thursday that the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability would go to Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax. Hussam's invention is already in use today, preventing serious health problems in residents of the professor's native Bangladesh.
After moving to the United States in 1978, Hussam got his citizenship and received a doctorate in analytical chemistry. The Centreville, Va., resident has spent much of this career trying to devise a solution to the arsenic problem, which was accidentally caused by international aid agencies that had funded a campaign to dig wells in Eastern India and Bangladesh.
The wells brought fresh groundwater to farmers and others who previously had been drinking from bacteria- and virus-laced ponds and mudholes. But the aid agencies were unaware that the groundwater also had naturally high concentrations of poisonous arsenic. As infectious diseases declined, arsenic-related skin ailments and fatal cancers began to increase _ a problem that attracted much attention in the 1990s.
"I myself and all my brothers were drinking this water," said Hussam, who added that his family did not get sick, possibly because they had a good diet, which can help stem the effects of digesting arsenic.
Allan Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said arsenic poisoning affects millions of people worldwide and it has been difficult to convince people that what seems to be good water might be toxic.
"You can't see it or taste or smell it," Smith said. "The idea that crystal-clear drinking water would end up causing lung disease in 20 or 30 years is a little weird. It's unbelievable to people."
Hussam spent years testing hundreds of prototype filtration systems. His final innovation is a simple, maintenance-free system that uses sand, charcoal, bits of brick and shards of a type of cast iron. Each filter has 20 pounds of porous iron, which forms a chemical bond with arsenic.
The filter removes almost every trace of arsenic from well water.
About 200 filtration systems are being made each week in Kushtia, Bangladesh, for about $40 each, Hussam said. More than 30,000 have been distributed.
Hussam said he plans to use 70 percent of his prize so the filters can be distributed to needy communities. He said 25 percent will be used for more research, and 5 percent will be donated to GMU.
The 2007 sustainability prize is funded by the Grainger Foundation of Lake Forest, Ill., and the contest was set up to target the arsenic problem. Among the criteria for winning was an affordable, reliable and environmentally friendly solution to the arsenic problem that did not require electricity.
Hussam's award will be presented Feb. 20 at Union Station in Washington.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
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